


In Between

by lincyclopedia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexual Harry Potter, Coming Out, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Ginny Weasley, Other, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25251754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lincyclopedia/pseuds/lincyclopedia
Summary: Ginny is neither a boy nor a girl. Luckily, Harry isn't straight.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44
Collections: Trans Wizard Tournament 2020





	In Between

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thanks to [bi-furious-babe](https://bi-furious-babe.tumblr.com/) for donating to the Trevor Project, to [OrSaiKellieLonore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrSaiKellieLonore) for the beta work, and to the mods for putting together the Trans Wizard Tournament!
> 
> 2\. Despite my username, I’m nonbinary. I don’t have brothers and the experience I depict Ginny having here isn’t identical to mine, but I do have some idea of what I’m talking about. Also, if you don’t believe that trans and nonbinary identities are real, kindly go elsewhere. You won’t enjoy this fic, and I won’t enjoy what you have to say about it, so please just leave.

It takes Ginny a long time to realise they're not a boy.

When Ron gets toilet-trained, Ginny keeps toddling into the loo, and they see enough to start trying to pee standing up, even though they don’t have the same bits as Ron. They pee on the floor of the loo enough times that their mother has to explain to them that they need to sit on the toilet to pee. Even then, they don’t cotton on to the fact that this makes them different from their brothers in any meaningful way. They sport the same bowl cut as Ron, and they wear his hand-me-downs. Clothed, the two of them look almost as similar in the mirror as the twins do. 

They get it eventually. Their mother stops cutting their hair so short, at some point, and when they’re five they get their first dress. None of their brothers has ever worn a dress before, even though it doesn’t look that different from the robes their parents wear. It’s around then that Ron and the twins stop wanting Ginny to play with them and start calling them a girl. They don’t understand all the implications, yet, but they do know by now that they’re not a boy. 

It takes Ginny even longer to realise they're not a girl.

It starts their first day at Hogwarts, when the prefects shepherd them up the stairs into the girls' dormitory when they'd kind of been planning on following Colin Creevy up to the boys' side. It continues every time the professors call them "Miss Weasley" and every time Hermione brushes off Harry and Ron in order to have "girl talk" or remarks on how nice it is to have "another girl around." It's worst when their brothers don't let them practice Quidditch with the rest of them.

But Ginny doesn't quite figure it out until their sixth year at Hogwarts, during those long, hard days of being the only Weasley at Hogwarts for the first time in their life, with their brother, their boyfriend, and one of their closest friends missing and with Death Eaters calling the shots. One day Professor Carrow calls them "young lady," and something inside them snaps.

“I’m not a lady and I never will be,” they retort, stunned by the unexpected words but incapable of finding them anything but true. 

Ginny knows their classmates and professor hear nothing more in that outburst than a confession of unladylike conduct, but they feel in their bones that the words mean something deeper. _I’m not a girl_ , they think. The thought is liberating for a few seconds, and then dread sets in: _What will my friends say? What will my family say? What will_ Harry _say?_ This last thought hits the hardest. They can keep this a secret from their friends or family, they think, but Harry? Ginny knows some people would scoff at the idea that they’ve loved Harry since the age of ten, but they know it’s true. If Harry lives—which is far from certain; is he even alive _now_?—Ginny wants a life with him, and the last time they saw each other he seemed to want that too. But Ginny needs to be honest with Harry if anything between them even has a prayer of lasting, and Harry likes girls. 

It’s two weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts, and a week after Fred’s funeral, when Ginny finally feels prepared to talk to Harry. They’ve honestly been avoiding him for a while, which felt like the easier option for a while, but they can tell it’s hurting him, and they don’t want that. They invite Harry out on a walk and then, once they’re out of earshot of the house, they say, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

Harry’s face falls. “Whoever it is, I’m happy for you both,” he says, though his words don’t match his tone. 

“What?” says Ginny, and then they figure out what he’s talking about and say, “No, no, no! I still want to be with you!” 

Relief washes over Harry’s face. “Oh. Thank Merlin.” 

“I’m—I think I’m not a girl,” says Ginny. They haven’t said it out loud before. 

Now Harry’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?” 

“I’m not a boy either,” says Ginny. “Gender doesn’t . . . I don’t know how to explain it. I just know it hurts whenever someone calls me a girl, or ‘young lady,’ or my brothers call me their sister, but I tried out ‘boy’ in my head and it doesn’t feel truer.” They haven’t been looking at Harry, but now they risk a glance at him. He looks confused but not repulsed. “It’s okay if you don’t want to be with me—you like girls, and I’m not one.” 

“Not just girls,” says Harry quietly. 

Ginny’s head whips in Harry’s direction. “What?”

“I think I liked Cedric, and maybe also Krum,” Harry says in the tone of a confession. “Not as much as I liked Cho, or as much as I like you, but differently than I like Ron or Hermione.” 

“So you don’t mind?” Ginny asks, daring to hope for the first time. 

“You don’t mind that I’m a—a queer?” Harry returns. 

Ginny outright laughs at that. “Pretty sure we both are.” 

Harry frowns. “I thought it meant boys who like boys. At least, that’s how Dudley always used it.” 

Ginny is glad they came of age under the influence of Fred and George’s utter nonconformity, Luna’s unabashed oddness, and Hermione’s insistence on researching everything. This equipped Ginny with the skills to recognize their queerness and then find out more, something Harry clearly didn’t have. They shake their head at Harry and say, “Boys who like boys are queer, but so are girls who like girls, and people who aren’t male or female, and people who are female even though society tells them they’re male, and people who are male even though society tells them they’re female.” 

Harry bites his lip for a moment and then says, “I thought being a queer was a bad thing. It was the sort of thing Dudley called me when he beat me up.” 

Ginny puts a hand on Harry’s arm, the first physical contact they’ve had this entire conversation. “I’m sorry he did that. He shouldn’t have, and you shouldn’t have had to grow up there, blood magic or no blood magic. But being queer is fine. Some people are queer and some people aren’t and it’s all fine. Some people are gits and think there’s something wrong with being queer, but that’s because they’re gits. I mean, do you trust Dudley’s moral compass?” 

Harry’s eyes widen at the question, and then he sighs. “No, I don’t. I guess I just still don’t really have it through my head that I don’t need to be afraid of him anymore.” Then he shakes his head. “Sorry, this conversation was supposed to be about you. You’re not a girl and you’re not a boy. What does that leave? Like, what are you?”

Ginny tries not to bristle. “That wasn’t the best way you could have phrased that question. But like, I’m a person, I guess? A human being. A teenager. Those are the nouns that come to mind, if you need a noun.” 

Harry nods. “Sorry about the phrasing. That makes sense. What does this mean for us?”

“Well,” says Ginny, “I want to be with you, but I don’t want to be your girlfriend. But it sounds like you don’t need the person you’re with to be your girlfriend, necessarily, even though Cho was, so I think this can work.” They glance over at Harry, who nods, though he looks nervous. “You can call me your significant other,” Ginny continues, “or the person you’re dating. Maybe the term ‘partner’ will make sense at some point, but that seems really adult in a way I don’t need yet, even if I did just fight my parents for the right to fight the Death Eaters.” 

“Agreed,” says Harry. “Are you planning on telling anyone about this? People might notice if I never call you my girlfriend.” 

Ginny groans. “Maybe? Can we cross that bridge if anyone asks? I was mostly focused on telling you.” 

“Why?” Harry looks baffled. 

“Because gender tends to matter more when people decide who to date than who to be friends with, and because I care about where things stand with you. I care a lot. I know you matter to a lot of people as the Boy Who Lived, but you matter to me as the boy I want to be with.” 

Harry closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he says, “I think I needed to hear that.” 

Ginny can’t help but smile. There’s so much relief in their veins right now. “Is there anything else we need to work out right now?” they ask. 

Harry shakes his head. 

“In that case, can I kiss you?” Ginny asks. 

“Please,” says Harry. 

They both surge forward, and their noses knock together before they tilt their heads and manage to press their lips together. It’s tentative at first—Ginny’s pretty sure neither of them has kissed anyone in nearly a year, since they last kissed each other—but then Harry’s lips start to open and Ginny matches the motion and their tongues are tangling together. Harry has one hand splayed on Ginny’s back and the other threading through their hair to cradle the back of their head. Ginny buries a hand in Harry’s hair in return, their other arm around his shoulders. The two of them breathe through their noses as the kiss stretches on and on. 

When Harry breaks the kiss, he drops his head onto Ginny’s shoulder and swears. “What are we doing?” he asks. 

“What do you mean?” Ginny asks, tense. 

“I mean—your brother is dead. We were at a massacre two weeks ago, and Death Eaters tried to kill both of us, like they’ve been trying for years. And now we’re kissing like nothing’s wrong?”

“I think we have to,” says Ginny. “I mean, we don’t have to kiss, if you don’t want to. But like. We have to grieve _and_ we have to keep going with our lives. It’s okay if things don’t feel normal for you right now, and if it takes a long time for you to be okay, and if you always carry with you a sense of loss. But it doesn’t make sense to deny yourself things you want as some sort of penance for still being alive. Fred died, yeah. He died laughing. I’m holding onto that. The point of that _can’t_ have been for us all to be miserable forever.” 

“Sorry,” says Harry, burrowing his head even harder into Ginny’s neck. “He was _your_ brother; I shouldn’t—” 

“Harry,” Ginny says sternly. “You have experienced so much trauma. Your entire childhood and adolescence were stolen from you, first by an abusive family and then by the need to save the world. You’ve spent the past year under an amount of stress I can’t even fully imagine. You get to be upset. Yes, it hurts to be me right now, and no, my adolescence wasn’t spectacular either. But none of that negates the fact that you have gone through an incredible number of incredibly difficult things, not to mention that your sense of purpose might be gone now that you’ve killed Voldemort, and you were probably running on adrenaline for the past several years and now that’s more or less dried up. You are entitled to your pain. You’re allowed to feel.” 

Harry swears and lifts his head so he can look Ginny in the eye. “You’re a magnificent person.” 

Ginny smiles. “Thanks. So are you.” 

Harry looks down. “Sorry about all that. I feel like this was easier even a year ago.” 

Ginny nods. “That makes sense. It’s been an awful year, and so many people just died.” 

“Yeah,” says Harry quietly. “I always forget how much you get it.”

Ginny smiles again, but this time it’s wry. “I know you do. But try to remember, okay? I know I haven’t been around for as much as Ron and Hermione, but I’ve been possessed by Voldemort, and I was at the Ministry, and surviving a year under the Carrows was no mean feat.” 

“I know,” says Harry. “You’ve impressed me for a long time, even if I’ve been bad at remembering everything you’ve been through.” 

“I’ll take it,” says Ginny. “What do you want to do now?” 

“What are the options?” Harry asks. 

“More kissing,” says Ginny. “Or we could walk around and talk, or not talk. Or we could go back to the house, and you could spend more time with Ron and Hermione, or we could sneak into my room and kiss or just . . . be, you know. Together.” 

“Can we do that last one?” says Harry. “I don’t know what I want, exactly, but that sounds good.” 

“Yeah,” says Ginny, taking Harry’s hand. “Come on, then.”


End file.
